CIAO DATE: 07/2010
May 2010
Center for Strategic and International Studies
The primary challenge for today’s defense acquisition system is to execute acquisition programs without major schedule delays and cost overruns. Meeting that challenge has been the goal of acquisition reform improvements for decades. Today, all parties agree that the time is right for renewed efforts to improve the performance of the defense acquisition system. In 2009, Congress unanimously passed the Weapon Systems Acquisition Reform Act of 2009 (WSARA), and President Obama signed it into Public Law 111-23 on May 22, 2009. All the players hailed it as an important step toward addressing many of the problematic issues facing the defense acquisition process. During the signing ceremony, President Obama summarized the key goals in developing WSARA, stating that the act will: “limit cost overruns before they spiral out of control. It will strengthen oversight and accountability by appointing officials who will be charged with closely monitoring the weapons systems we’re purchasing to ensure that costs are controlled... This law will also enhance competition and end conflicts of interest in the weapons acquisitions process so that American taxpayers and the American military can get the best weapons at the lowest cost.”Many in the White House and the Congress relied on reports by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which had studied 96 major defense acquisition programs (MDAPs) and identified aggregate cost overruns of $296 billion and an average delay in delivering initial capabilities of 22 months.
Resource link: Implementation of the Weapon Systems Acquisition Reform Act of 2009 [PDF] - 654K